A Movie A Day #292: The Bride (1985, directed by Franc Roddam)

The Bride opens where most films about Frankenstein and his monster end.

The Baron (played by fucking Sting, of all people) has agreed to create a bride for his creation, who in this movie is named Viktor and played by Clancy Brown. Jennifer Beals plays the Bride, who is named Eva. Eva looks like a normal, beautiful wielder-turned-dancer so when she first sees Viktor, she screams. Viktor gets upset and starts to trash the laboratory. “Don’t be impertinent!’ snaps the Baron’s assistant (Quentin Crisp). A fire breaks out. Quentin Crisp dies and so does another assistant played by Timothy Spall. The monster escapes. The Baron takes Eva into his household. The Baron is obsessed with controlling Eva, who wants her independence and who has fallen in love with Cary Elwes. When Eva sees a cat, she screams. “You never told me about cats,” she tells the Baron, “I thought it was a tiny lion!”

The rest of the movie is a bewildering collection of cameos from respected thespians forced to recite some of the worst dialogue in film history. Viktor befriends Rinaldo the dwarf (David Rappaport), who tells Viktor about how much he dreams of one day seeing Venice. After Rinaldo is murdered by Alexei Sayle, Viktor swears that he will go to Venice and he will take Eva with him.

(Timothy Spall, Quentin Crisp, and Alexei Sayle are not the only British performers to be strangely miscast in The Bride. Keep an eye out for Phil Daniels, Ken Campbell, and Tony Haygarth, all wasted in small roles.)

The Bride attempts to put a revisionist, feminist spin on the story of Frankenstein but it ultimately just looks like a two hour Duran Duran video, with a guest vocals provided by Sting. The scenes with Clancy Brown and David Rappaport work but otherwise, every important role is miscast. Jennifer Beals is monotonous as the Bride and Sting never comes close to suggesting that he is capable of the type of mad genius that would be necessary to create life. When it comes to the Bride of Frankenstein, stick with the original.

One final note: Both Sting and Phil Daniels also appeared in a much better film from Franc Roddam, Quadrophenia. I recommend seeing Quadrophenia almost as much as I recommend forgetting about The Bride.